7th Sea

7th Sea is a game of high seas adventure, duels at dawn, court intrigue, and dread sorcery. The rules favor story flow over crunch. Characters are built around a traits-and-skills approach, and the narrative-focused mechanics use a pool of ten-sided (d10) dice.

Players can take on the roles of adventurers, conspirators, spies, sellswords, investigators, political operatives, soldiers, sailors, or pirates. The game is best for groups of up to five players and is suited to lengthy character-driven sandbox-style campaigns.

Here’s how the publisher describes 7th Sea:

7th Sea is a tabletop roleplaying game of swashbuckling and intrigue, exploration and adventure, taking place on the continent of Théah, a land of magic and mystery inspired by our own Europe. Players take on the roles of heroes thrown into global conspiracies and sinister plots, exploring ancient ruins of a race long vanished and protecting the rightful kings and queens of Théah from murderous villains. It is a world of sharp blades and sharp wits, where a cutting retort can be just as deadly as a sword’s point.

Three Things About 7th Sea

The Lands of Théah: The alternate 18th Century Europe that serves as the game’s setting is familiar enough that it is easy to jump into, but unique in its details.

Risks, Approaches, and Raises: Task resolution is defined by Risks that characters must overcome, Approaches they use to tackle those Risks, and successful die combinations (Raises) that can be used to narrate the outcome.

Naval Combat: In most fantasy games, rules for fighting at sea are bolted on as an afterthought, if at all. Not so here – ships and sailors can duke it out with comprehensive naval combat rules.